WE were leaving the Chinatown restaurant in New York and scanning the table for anything left behind when I suddenly realised that I had lost my glasses. Last seen sitting on the table. Tapped my pockets, scanned the table once more, looked on the floor. The helpful waiters moved the table and I searched the…
I WAS stepping back 400 years in time the other day when I boarded the Dutch trading ship which made the first European landfall in Australia. Well, it wasn’t the actual craft: it was a full-size replica, but one which has sailed the perilous journey from Australia to Holland and from Indonesia to Australia, tracing…
THE train was hurtling from Manhattan to Brooklyn when the man beside me suddenly addressed me: ‘Well, what do you think? Trump or Clinton?’ I was about to reply when he made it easier for me. ‘They’re both arseholes,’ he declared. ‘It’s a difficult choice,’ I ventured, ‘but it’s not one I have to make.…
IT’S BEEN 49 years since I was last in New York and not much has changed. Sure, the Twin Towers are not there. But then they weren’t there in 1967. Apart from that, there’s the ever-present traffic chaos above ground while the subway works so efficiently below ground, the New Yorkers are as friendly and…
ONCE upon a time, when I was young and carefree, I ran away from home with my toothbrush, a bottle of milk and some biscuits raided from the larder. I slipped round the corner to my friend and stayed there all day, both of us setting up home in our secret place beneath the trees…
THERE’S something wrong with my travel bucket list. The website Trip Advisor has published the top 25 landmarks for 2015, as chosen by millions of travellers, and I’ve visited only nine of them. What struck me about the list (see below) is that the UK did not rate a mention at all, whereas Italy, Spain,…
IT’S A MARKETING ploy as old as Moses and his Ten Commandments. You can’t possibly stay healthy / stay fit / enjoy yourself / progress your career / do anything at all without doing these 100 / 50 / 25 / 10 things which somebody else has determined are must do’s for you. The Top…
AS A RESIDENT of Perth in Western Australia, it seems I am living in one of the top ten cities in the world. A new global travel magazine, The Escapist, from the London-based Monocle group, hails the scenic beauty of parts of Perth as rivalling the Amalfi coast of Italy. The magazine ranks Perth 8th…
LIKE MANY Baby Boomers and pre-Boomers I grew up learning the order of our planets with a little ditty: Mum’s Very Edible Marmalade Jam Sits Nicely Upon Plates. Of course, that was back in the days when there were nine planets, before the star scientists decided to downgrade poor little Pluto. That’s why I’m glad…
YOU’RE waiting and watching at the baggage carousel. And waiting. And watching. Until finally there are no bags going round and the carousel stops. That’s when you accept what has become increasingly obvious – you’ve arrived but your luggage hasn’t. Our two bags went missing on a flight with Vueling from Dubrovnik to Barcelona (via…
Booming Marvellous 